Pretty When You Cry
by Magyck Ravan
Summary: Satoshi is figuring out where, in the long run, the loyalties lie. Dark is just trying to explain. SatDai, implied onesided DarkDaisuke.


Title: Pretty When You Cry

Summary: Satoshi's figuring out, in the long run, where all of the loyalties lie.

Disclaimer: No. I don't own DN Angel or VAST. Or any lyrics that'll be contained within the next chapters.

**Chapter One: And I Can't Tell**

_you're made of my river baby  
you're made of my sin  
and i cant tell where your lust ends  
and where your love begins_

_--"Pretty When You Cry," VAST_

This is how it always ends.

Dark crawling out a window, slick and shadows, feathers drifting slow down in the air, and Satoshi is a little lost. Not for the first time; this isn't the first time that Dark has held him accountable for something, has stopped to speak and remind that _yes, Daisuke is mine, not yours_ and that he _doesn't take very well to others going after rightfully stolen things_, but he has to say that this last visit took everything out of him.

Dark, one arm wrapped around Satoshi, yanking sleek blue hair back in one hand, a furious touch leaving heat trails down his skin. Mouth insistent, rough, and Satoshi jerks back breathless, hissing softly through his teeth.

"No, Dark, damnit, this isn't..."

Dark pulls back, small smile crawling across his face. Smug, arrogant. "...what you want."

Satoshi shivers, unable to stop the slow trembling.

With a soft touch, Dark's eyes shift, slit-pupiled smug to amber and confused, and then back again. "I'm not Daisuke, Hiwatari."

A small headshake, _no_.

"Niwa wouldn't understand," he finally finds his sarcasm, his antagonism. "He doesn't..."

Dark sighs, tracing the sharp angles of Satoshi's face; the boy swears, softly, jerking away from the alluring pressure, because he knows under that, somewhere, is Niwa, always Niwa, was based in Niwa blood and had his Niwa in there. Amber eyes and thick, bright hair. "Hiwatari, you don't get it, do you?"

The Thief sounds so disappointed, somehow, that Satoshi catches himself wanting to reassure at first, and doesn't understand why. Dark does it again, "Do you?" and pitches it softly into Niwa's slightly squeaky range. "Daisuke is me. I am Daisuke. He always understands." He bites off the end of the sentence, presses his lips mockingly to Satoshi's forehead, and slinks out.

Muzzily, and then with growing rage, he feels Krad stretch, flex, and--

--

Daisuke wakes up, shuddery and wanting, at five in the morning. Breathless, he tastes of caramel and the slightly bitter, musky scent of Dark lingers on his skin. There's an unfamiliar added smell that he can't quite place, but makes his breath hitch.

Dark has retreated somewhere, in that blank, walled-off corner of his mind. Sleeping. Noiseless.

_Dark?_

Nothing.

Daisuke shoves himself out of the covers, notices that he's bleeding slightly across one cheek, that his face is still flush and hot. Notices that he's starting to panic, and calls again, urgently, _DARK._

A soft reach, the feel of wings brushing his fingertips in greeting, then relaxing with a swift sense of smugness filling his veins, and Daisuke knows that something important has happened, that Dark is hiding that from him again. He tries, reaches back, scrabbles through memory, words tumbling syllable over syllable in his head, hoping to irritating Dark into responding, and then he places the scent.

Hiwatari-kun. The slightly icy, bitter cologne that Hiwatari-kun uses, and the vaguely musty smell of his apartment. His sterile, cold apartment. The very thought of being there sends a slow tingle through him, makes his muscles tense with the want to change, and that scares Daisuke suddenly. Because Hiwatari-kun isn't supposed to affect him that way.

_DARK. What did we do?_

**Nothing, Daisuke.** The mindvoice has lost its regular tone, has slipped so that the syllables are too smooth and slightly accented. Lying through his incoporeal teeth.

_We were at Hiwatari-kun's apartment..._

Dark stretches slowly, sighs. **Yes, we were. Do you want me to show you?**

_Dark..._ he starts, whispers, "Yes," and stills with the flicker flash of memory, then the wave, sliding through. And little Daisuke, sweet little Daisuke, finds himself swearing for once.

**Dai-su-ke.**

"Fuck."

**Precisely.**

A moment of silence, Daisuke trembling with holding back, trying to push the emotion back down, the raw, taut longing, and then he gives, embraces it and comes back to as a phantom in the back of _Dark's_ mind. The great Phantom Thief Dark closes slit-pupiled eyes, and sighs, voice muzzy with sleep and something ineffable.

"Daisuke... Daisuke, now what are you going to do?"

--

Satoshi wakes again, wakes with the coppery bitterness of blood in his mouth. Wakes and doesn't remember the dreams, only remembers Dark reaching over and caressing him, and then Krad flexing into existance. Can remember the wash of agony, of skin ripping to make way for wings, and then passing out blissfully.

"I have got to stop doing this," he mumbles, sighs, trying to shove himself out of bed and beyond the dizziness rushing up to claim him.

"Yeah, you do, I guess," a small, hesitant voice whispers from beside him, and Satoshi reacts instantly, grabs at his glasses on the sideboard, brushing away white feathers and staring, though he knows the voice intimately. Knows it in every cell.

"Niwa, how did you..."

"Dark." By 17, Daisuke has filled out and grown a bit further into his skin; after he lost the gangly and awkward stage, he grew into his own grace, a sleek, smiling spot of red in the flood of people. "And I can break in, myself," he adds, uncertainly, sounding so very much like his fourteen-year-old former self.

Niwa slips from the shadows, floating in them, a burst of amber and flame on the stark austerity of the room, and Satoshi feels his breath hitch, the anger leaking, slowly, away. "Damnit, Niwa. What do you want?"

Distantly, he hears Krad waking, but does what he can to ignore. Does what he can to make sure that no blood is shed, that the one little cut on Niwa's face doesn't bloom.

At least Niwa has the common sense to look abashed. "I just wanted to..." he breathes, and then starts in again, one long sentence. "I just wanted to say that you're that that... I need you."

A long pause, Satoshi drawing the sheets back up against him, as if they'd protect from anything; he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and sighs. "I... For...?"

Irrationally, he knows that Niwa won't attack, that the boy won't shift to Dark and anger Krad further; that he won't be forced into the defensive while still in nightclothes. This doesn't actually mean anything when Niwa presses up against him and kisses him properly, curls a hand around his neck as his precious Hiwatari-kun leans into it, begins to respond, and then jerks away.

"Hiwatari-kun," he whispers, Satoshi stunned into stillness, and then spins on his heels and runs as only the trained can, swift and silent.

Krad stretches, growls, **He did not just do that. Let me--**

The pressure, and Satoshi recoils, knowing what he can, can't, won't let happen, because that briefest bit of sheer ecstacy has eclipsed the fear and protection that will replace it later.

_No._

**Satoshi-sama, you know he doesn't mean it, only is hurting...**

_NO._

**He is Niwa.**

With the warmth slowly replacing itself with an icy chill, the regular blend of hate and longing, Satoshi lays back down, because Krad's rage and his near-change is making him dizzy again.

Maybe he just won't go to school today.


End file.
